Twitter is busy today letting everyone know why everyone writes. Some people do it for self and some do it for others. Some do it to persuade and others do it to express. Still others have odder reasons that stand beside or blend or ignore all of the above.

But me …

One of my first memories is sitting at the dining room table in my grandparent’s house. A filing cabinet full of paper and pencils and crayons sat in the corner, behind the table, and I was free to occupy myself with them whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted — or until dinner time, whichever came first. I drew pictures of bugs and trees and the window, a frame through which a world might be presented.

That feeling persisted when I went to school, when I sat at a desk with a pen in my hand and wrote notes. And doodled in the margins, of course … and those doodles had captions, eventually. The captions grew to become portions of stories, of dialogue and description and plot.

The feeling hasn’t faded, even though I’ve switched from pens to keyboards, from paper to the bright white screen of a computer. My grandparents have been gone for many years, but every time I sit down to create, to pass the images in my head to the page in front of me, I feel them still, as if I am still at that dining room table, and they are still in the kitchen, in the office, in the garden, doing their thing while I do mine.

And that, ultimately, is why I write. Because it is as much a part of me as they were, and are, and always will be.